WASHINGTON — Lawmakers and presidential candidates are having their say about the 12-nation Pacific Rim trade accord that is President Obama’s top economic priority in his final year in office. But lately the liveliest debate over the deal is among blue-ribbon economists. [Jackie Calmes| February, 1 2016 | The New York Times] On Monday, it…
Factory workers in the old Soviet Union had a cynical joke: “We pretend to work. They [the bosses] pretend to pay us.” Similar logic applies in the world trading system. Washington pretends to write the rules; other nations pretend to obey them. [Eamonn Fingleton| February, 1 2016 | Forbes] For two generations already, increasingly pathetic American trade…
The NYT had an article on different trade models that are being used to predict the impact of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP). It reported on the projections from a model from the Peterson Institute which shows that the TPP would add 0.036 percentage points to the annual growth rate over the next 14 years. On the other…
